91Èȱ¬

91Èȱ¬ News -

On August the 12th the Kilvey Hill TV transmitter serving 132,000 homes in Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot goes digital. The rest of Wales will follow by March next year.

Although 90 per cent of main sets in Wales are already converted to digital, thousands of households are yet to make the change.

The large numbers involved will inevitably lead to some confusion and where there's confusion, there's potential for a con.

Taking steps to try and protect viewers from possible scams is Consumer Focus Wales - its spokesman is Gareth Price.

"We're doing some mystery shopper work, calling up aerial installers and people who sell TVs to try and see what information is about."

"Trading standards officers in Dorset found one case where a TV retailer was suggesting to people that they needed a £1,000 television to make the benefits of digital work for them. Just not true."

As well as the mystery shopper exercise, from this week Consumer Focus will be taking out bilingual adverts in the local press aimed at giving viewers hints for switching safely.

"What we're trying to do is make sure that people have the correct information so they can switch safely and not be vulnerable to being ripped off."

The body over-seeing the whole switch over process is Digital UK. It is working with organisations like Consumer Focus to reduce the risks involved, while stressing the benefits for Welsh viewers.

Emyr Hughes is Digital UK's national manager for Wales. He says that the geography of Wales means that delivering a strong TV signal will always be challenging but that the end of analogue will help improve the picture.

"In parts of Wales analogue television reception isn't all that wonderful because we've got so many hills and valleys."

"A lot of people have Freeview, but it has to run at low power because Ofcom won't allow us to put the power up while analogue is there because otherwise the digital signals would interfere with it."

"Now we're talking about running Freeview after switchover at higher powers - multiplying it by ten."

"The new high-powered digital signals plus satellite filling in the gaps means everybody can have a really good choice of channels."